I was asked recently on a business site what 'good creative' meant in regards to motivating and engaging an audience.

My answer was as follows.

..to me 'good creative' for marketing, engaging and motivating an audience is as simple as the 'free sample or gift'....which of course can take many forms.

Applying your question to my field of humor (standup and comedy writing) I would say that nothing compares to giving the audience something to take home and mostly think about outside of just the immediate laughs.

For me it's the 'message' I have throughout my act. At my shows the audience laughs and at the same time feel as if they are 'being let in on something very positive', as in an understanding along with a few how to's to deal with life's stress and constant attacks of aggravations, etc.. to take home. They leave with something immediate that will be helpful to them long after my show has ended. 

I had a man come up to me after my show once in Memphis,  TN. He told me that he and his family had seen me a couple of years before at another venue. At that time I was doing a bit that had a catch phrase that he and his family have been using since they had seen me. He went on to tell me the catch phrase had spread thru his entire family nationwide and was used as an understanding and release of tension. In other words I had helped many branches of a family communicate better using humor. That conversation helped me grasp just how powerful a simple standup comedy piece can be. I never forgot that lesson.

That good feeling (which is always engaging) given to an audience wins me fans and motivates them to return to my next performances. They recognize (feel) that there is more to my show than just laughs. 

Emotional things are powerful (as in engaging and motivating) and standup comedy is almost pure emotion, there is no reason your standup shouldn't resonate to the point of staying power with your audience.

Your own catch phrases, funny solutions to life's problems, and personal stories of using humor to overcome adversity becomes indelible in the minds of an audience. The comic artist that does this becomes memorable, which of course means you standout to people and that equals developing an audience. Which is in the comedy world is GREAT creative!

                               Humor helps humans heal!

'You don't really lead people, you motivate people to follow'. ~comedydojo